The kingdom of this world summary
The Kingdom of This World
tutorial, research guide, critical commentary, further reading
The Kingdom of this World (1949) is Alejo Carpentier’s historical novel documenting the first successful slave revolution in the Americas. It took place on the island of Hispanola in what is now Haiti between 1791 and 1804. The story is told largely from the point of view of a poor slave, and it unfolds in a series of amazingly vivid tableaux that capture both the confusion of political upheavals and the complexities of European colonialism in the New World. It is generally considered Carpentier’s first fantastic novel.
The Kingdom of This Earth – commentary
Historical background
The islands that make up the Antilles were first visited (‘discovered’) by Christopher Columbus in 1492. He was making his journey westward in search of spices and gold, and he thought he had landed in China or India. That’s why the area is known as the West Indies.
His journey was quickly replicated by the British and the French. All of these European nations claimed ownership wherever they landed. And they were meanwhile at war with each other. At this time even America w
The Kingdom of This World
by Alejo Carpentier
THE LITERARY WORK
A novel set in Haiti and Cuba from the 1750s to the early 1820s; published in Spanish (as El reino de este mundo) in 1949, in English in 1957.
SYNOPSIS
Told largely from the perspective of Ti Noël, a creole slave on a sugar plantation in the north of Haiti, the novel tracks the massive upheaval caused by the antislavery insurrections, the end of slavery and colonial rule in Haiti, and the nation’s prior years as an independent republic.
Events in History at the Second the Novel Takes Place
The Novel in Focus
Events in History at the Time the Novel Was Written
For More Information
Alejo Carpentier was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1904, two years after his mother, a Russian pianist and language teacher, and his father, an architect from France, immigrated to Cuba. He received his secondary education in France, and then returned to Cuba to study architecture in Havana. When his father abandoned the family, Carpentier left architecture school and worked as a journalist to support them. Through his perform, he traveled widely and became increasingly engaged in anti-imperialist and anti-fascist struggles in the Cari
Summary: The Kingdom of Mali and the City of Timbuktu in the 14th Century
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The Mali Empire controlled all of the salt trade along the trade routes and was the second largest and most successful empire between 1230 and 1600.
The Niger River
The Niger River played an important part in Mali’s success, providing a procedure of transporting heavy goods and accessing more trade. The river also made the soil more fertile, which led to superior crops and better feed to raise livestock.
Some of the most commonly grown crops included beans, cotton, gourds, millet, papaya, peanuts, rice and sorghum. Livestock included cattle, goats, poultry and sheep.
Economy
All goods had to be heavily taxed and all gold nuggets were declared property of the king, leaving only gold dust to be traded. The Empire also offered protection against opposition that started along the trade routes. As the Empire expanded, salt, cotton cloth, gold and later cowrie shells were used as currency.
Mansa Musa
Known as the King of Kings, Mansa Musa was one of the most successful and wealthy leaders of the Kingdom of
The Kingdom of This World Summary & Study Guide
The Kingdom of This World tells the story of Ti Noël and the political turmoil in Haiti following the French colonial days. Ti Noël is a slave on a plantation in northern Haiti, then known as Santo Domingo. He participates in a rebellion against the French colonists. When his master flees to Cuba, Ti Noël is taken along and lost in a card game to a Cuban plantation owner. Ti Noël saves up his money and buys passage back to the now-free Haiti only to find that dictatorial King Henri Christophe has made slave labor of his fellow blacks. Henri Christophe is overthrown only for a mulatto upper class to rise and enforce labor on the darker-skinned blacks. At the end of his life, Ti Noël still stands up to call out a cry of rebellion to the world.
As the novel begins, Ti Noël is living on the plantation of a French colonist near the Cap, a city on the north coast of Santo Domingo. Another slave on the plantation, Macandal, gets his arm caught in a machine and it is crushed and later amputated. The one-armed slave is tasked with taking the cows to pasture, and in the foothills he discovers a wealth of plants of various kinds, including
The Kingdom of This World, Reimagined
Alejo Carpentier's most celebrated book, The Kingdom of This World (first published as El reino de este mundo in 1949), recounts the events surrounding the Haitian Revolution (c. 1791–1804). The book follows the trials and tribulations of Ti Noël, an enslaved laborer on a colonial sugar plantation in Saint Domingue. The books' opening chapter depicts the gruesome scene in which Ti Noël's friend, Makandal, who is also enslaved, loses his arm in a violent sugar mill accident, forcing him to flee the plantation to evade certain death. In doing so, the events of the Revolution are set into motion. During this volatile era of war, imperial rule, and social change, Ti Noël struggles to find a place for himself as a freed man on an island where he was once enslaved. As Ti Noël's journal unfolds, so too do the historical events before, during, and after the Haitian Revolution.
Carpentier famously wrote The Kingdom of This World in a style of prose he called lo real maravilloso (the marvelous real). Acknowledged in English as Magical Realism, this style is